Cleveland Museum of Natural History picks physicist as its new director

John Kuntz / The Plain Dealer"Happy," a 150 million-year-old Haplocanthosaurus delfsi dinosaur fossil, is one of the signature pieces in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History's collection. The museum named a new executive director Tuesday.Evalyn Gates, a well-known physicist, author, educator and advocate of increasing the ranks of women in science, is the new executive director of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

Museum trustees voted Tuesday afternoon to approve Gates' appointment, ending an 18-month international search to fill the post left vacant by the resignation of Bruce Latimer in June 2008.

View full sizeCleveland Museum of Natural History"The museum has a long history of great science and wonderful programming," said physicist Evalyn Gates, who was named the Cleveland Museum of Natural History's new director Tuesday."My head is spinning a bit," Gates said during a phone interview shortly after the museum announced her selection. "I'm absolutely thrilled and delighted to take the leadership of this outstanding institution. We're uniquely poised to do something important."

Gates is currently assistant director of the University of Chicago's Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, and a member of the university's research faculty in astronomy and astrophysics.

She previously held leadership positions at Chicago's popular Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum, including overseeing the creation of new exhibits and shows, developing new galleries, and heading the facility's public education efforts.

In 2006 she wrote a provocative opinion piece in "Physics Today," the widely read magazine of the physics community, challenging her colleagues to help overcome the gender bias that has discouraged women from pursuing careers in physics and other sciences.

"She's taken an active role making people aware of what they can do to fix the problem of the small number of women in science," said Stephan Meyer, the Kavli Institute's associate director.

Gates "has always strongly believed in the public mission of science and the role of scientists to explain what they're doing and why they're doing it to the general public," said Cyrus Taylor, dean of Case Western Reserve University's College of Arts and Sciences and Gates' advisor while she earned her doctorate in theoretical particle physics from the university. She also holds an undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering from CWRU.

"Evalyn is dynamic and has had experience in both the research world and the museum world," said former CWRU physics department chairman Lawrence Krauss, who as a Yale University professor supervised Gates' postdoctoral research.

"It's an innovative appointment," said Krauss, now director of Arizona State University's Origins Initiative, though he remains on the Cleveland natural history museum's board of trustees. "It'll be good to have fresh energy at the museum. It will be exciting to see what she can do."

Gates, who starts her new job May 17, arrives at a crucial time in the history of the 90-year-old museum. Like many other charitable institutions, its endowment was hit hard by the recession, and last February the museum laid off 16 employees, though it finished the fiscal year with a $130,000 surplus. Plans for renovation and expansion are gathering momentum, with architectural details and a fundraising goal expected to be announced later this year.

"I feel like I'm jumping in at a wonderful place," said Gates.

She said she expects to continue to build relationships between the natural history museum and other University Circle institutions. The museum is already a partner in CWRU's Institute for the Science of Origins, launched two years ago to bring together scientists from different backgrounds to study how complex systems such as humans or galaxies evolve.

Gates also said she wants to find ways to reach people who are missing out on the joy of learning about the world around them.

"Science is a lot of fun and very exciting," she said. "Sometimes I don't think we've extended the right invitation to all groups. As a museum director, I definitely hope to have an impact on that."

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